Chapter Twenty-Two #2
Lottie nodded. Whatever was swimming in his clear blue eyes made her feel weak and fluttery. It was not esteem—it was the shine of enmity. “What?” he demanded, growing irritable with her intent study of him.
Lottie was reminded of another time he’d asked her what, and she’d said everything. He was everything. “Well...I should verra much like to kiss you, that’s what.”
His gaze darkened. “My father and brother are waiting. We’ll receive you once you’ve broken your fast, aye?” He turned around and strode away from her.
Lottie’s heart deflated until there was no life left in it. Aulay had lost all regard for her, and it hurt.
* * *
THEY WERE FED a king’s breakfast with fresh eggs and ham, soup and cheese, and freshly-baked bread. “What do you think, is it our last meal, then?” Duff asked curiously as he stuffed more bread into his mouth.
Lottie’s stomach turned, and she put down her fork.
“Beg your pardon.”
She glanced up—the butler was standing at the end of their table. “Aye?”
“Miss Livingstone, Mr. Duff Livingstone, Mr. Robert MacLean and Mr. Gilroy are to accompany me to the laird’s study, aye?
They rest of you shall return to the gatehouse where you will wait until further notice.
” He gave them a curt nod of his head and stepped back, waiting for them to do as he instructed.
“Sounds a wee bit formal, does it no’?” Mr. MacLean muttered.
“I donna see why I’m no’ allowed to come,” Mathais complained. “I helped take the ship as much as anyone.”
“Donna be daft, lad,” Duff said, chuffing him on the shoulder. “Do you think this is to be a feill?” he asked, referring to a Highland festival.
A guard appeared to march them off to the gatehouse, and Lottie, Duff, Mr. MacLean and Gilroy followed the butler down a darkened corridor to a pair of oak doors. He opened them, stepped inside and bowed. “The Livingstones, milord.”
Lottie was the first to enter, determined to accept the blame for all of it.
But when she stepped inside, the room stopped her midstride—she’d not expected it to be so large or so grand.
There were large windows along one wall, framed with heavy velvet drapes.
A hearth with a cheery fire chased the damp, but the most striking thing was the wall of books.
So many books! It was what she imagined a king’s room to look like.
The other thing that startled her was how many people were in the room.
The laird and his wife, of course, as well as Catriona.
Aulay stood at the hearth with a man with rich brown hair who was a wee bit taller and broader.
That man stared at Lottie in a manner that she was very much accustomed to, but then suddenly glanced away, to a woman seated in a chair nearby.
There was another couple, the lady on a settee, the gentleman standing behind her.
“Miss Livingstone,” the laird said. “You will pardon me if I donna rise, aye? My leg pains me. You’ve met my wife and daughter. Might I also introduce my son Rabbie Mackenzie, and his wife, Mrs. Bernadette Mackenzie.”
“How do you do,” the woman said in a crisp, English accent.
How did she do? She was shaking in her borrowed slippers, hoping there was something to which she might cling to keep from collapsing.
“My daughter Vivienne and her husband, Mr. Marcas Mackenzie,” the laird continued.
“Madainn mhath,” the woman said.
“Madainn mhath,” Lottie responded, her voice scarcely above a whisper.
“You may introduce yourself, then,” the laird said.
Lottie curtsied and introduced the Livingstones, who stood behind her in a half circle, none of them coming any deeper into the room.
“I’d like to ask a few questions, if I may?” the laird continued and gestured to a chair at his desk. “Will you sit, then, Miss Livingstone?”
Lottie glanced at the chair. She clasped her hands before her to hide her trembling and said, “If you please, milord, I prefer to stand.”
One of his bushy brows rose above the other. “Verra well. You may begin by explaining when you first saw the royal ship in pursuit?”
So it had been a royal ship. Lottie exchanged a worried look with her men.
“Shortly after we came round the Orkneys, sir,” Gilroy said, stepping forward. “’Twas my ship that was lost.”
“What caused the altercation between you and the royal ship?”
Gilroy looked at Lottie.
She cleared her throat. “We carried illegal spirits, milord. Spirits we’d distilled, aye?”
There was a rustling in the room, and the laird glanced at his sons. Aulay’s expression remained impassive, but his brother was gaping at Lottie, either appalled by her audacity, or that she’d admitted it.
“If I may?” Lottie asked. The laird nodded.
“We’ve a new laird on Lismore Island, Mr. Duncan Campbell, aye?
He’s raised our rents, and we canna afford to pay them.
My father...” She paused, swallowing down a lump in her throat, the wound still so fresh.
“May he rest in peace,” she added softly.
“My father had the idea that as we could no’ produce our rents by our usual means, which is to say, a wee bit of farming or fishing, that we might do it with whisky. ”
“Illegal whisky,” the laird unnecessarily reminded her.
“Quite.”
“Did you know, then, that the Campbells are engaged in the legitimate end of the whisky trade?” he asked curiously.
“Aye, milord.”
The laird looked again at his sons.
Lottie felt strangely at ease, somehow calmed by the truth.
It was easier to just say it, to admit everything they’d done, than try and hide aspects of it to make them look at least somewhat justified.
So she forged ahead. “Our laird Campbell, he suspected what we were about, that he did. He meant to find the stills, but we had them hidden verra well. Still, he kept coming round, kept looking, and we knew it was only a matter of time ere he found them. We decided we ought to sell what we had.”
“Why Denmark?” the laird asked curiously. “God knows there’s enough of a market in Scotland, aye?”
“Aye, milord, but we thought it no’ safe, no’ with Mr. Campbell’s suspicions and his eyes everywhere.
We... All of us,” she said, gesturing to her companions, “are descended from the Danes. A man had come from Denmark last summer and mentioned that he had worked with a trading company in Aalborg that traded spirits and tobacco.”
“You were sailing to Denmark when the royal ship met you, then.”
Lottie nodded. “They came round, signaled for us to drop our sails. When we did no’, they fired on us,” Lottie said. How odd that the memory was so vivid in her mind, but seemed like almost a lifetime ago now. It felt like a story she’d once told. So much had happened since that day.
“And you fired on them?” the laird asked.
“Aye,” Lottie admitted. “On my honor, I donna know how we managed to strike them at all, much less cause a fire. None of us are sailors.”
“I’d say you’re a better shot than sailor, I would,” the laird said. “The ship had to be scuttled.”
“Bloody hell,” Duff muttered behind her.
“So, then, while you were taking on water, along comes the Reulag Balhaire to your aid, and you determine the best course of action is to deceive the captain and his men and take control of the ship, is that it?”
Lottie winced. She glanced at Aulay. “We didna mean to keep it,” she said softly. “We meant to...to borrow it, more or less.”
“Borrow it,” the laird repeated. “How in hell do you borrow a ship?”
Her cheeks felt as if they were burning.
“Aye, well, we tricked them, milord. We had nothing but that bloody whisky, nothing to our name, and verra few options.” She paused, swallowing down the bitter truth that she had chosen the wrong path.
She should have accepted her fate as a woman and a daughter of the Livingstone chief and accepted MacColl’s offer.
Her regret knew no depths. She cleared her throat.
“We stood to lose our land to the laird and decided, as a clan, that we ought to sell the whisky. We never meant to do more than take our whisky to Aalborg and sell it and return the ship to the captain as we found it.”
The laird leaned back in his chair and templed his fingers.
“Either you are the most na?ve lass I have every encountered, or verra canny. Anyone may call a deed what she likes, aye? But in the end, ’tis your actions that speak.
You took our ship without consent. And as a result, it is now lost to us and at considerable expense. ”
Lottie’s pulse began to pound in her ears, dreading what he would say next.
“This morning I sent a messenger to Port Glasgow with the news that we’d lost the ship. I sent another messenger to request a justice of the peace. He’ll hear our complaint and determine what is to be done with your clan, he will. We might expect him in a fortnight.”
“It was all my doing, milord,” Lottie said. “Not theirs.”
“No’ true,” Mr. MacLean said. “We all had a hand in it.”
“Aye, but I am the one who commanded it, in the name of my father the chief,” Lottie said.
The laird put his hands against his desk and pushed himself to stand.
“Do you bloody fools think I care who of you made the decision? You all participated, and you’ll all be judged for it.
You’ll remain here, under guard, until the justice of the peace arrives.
You are forbidden from leaving Balhaire. ”
Lottie’s breakfast began to rumble disagreeably in her belly. She put her hand on Mr. MacLean’s arm to steady herself. “We’ll return to our rooms, then?” she asked uncertainly.
“I think that best,” the laird said coolly, and waved a hand, dismissing them. Lottie gave him a small curtsy, then turned around, gesturing her men to the door. She stole a glimpse of Aulay just before walking out of the room.
He was standing at the windows, his back to her.